Neither
the union budget nor the National Health Policy 2017 presents
any clear and convincing health sector road map. If it is
serious about providing health care to even bottom 40% of
the population, not only should the government increase its
current budgetary allocation substantially but also strengthen
the health infrastructure at all levels including a strong
regulatory mechanism.

The
strategy of the current budget seems to be simple: make immense
noise about “helping the victimized” but do not give an extra
paisa from the budget towards that ends. With the expenditure
squeeze being carried out to reduce fiscal deficit, the share
of central government spending in GDP is in fact budgeted
to fall.

Even
the vaguely “pink” effort in the Economic Survey is whitewashed
in the finance minister’s Budget speech that is heavily based
on stereotypical gender roles for women, and even that completely
disappears when we get to the actual budget allocations.

This
government is especially good at optics, at managing public
perceptions to persuade people that it is working for them,
rather than doing so. So it is no surprise that Arun Jaitley’s
pre-election Budget Speech went on about how much his government
cares for the people, the poor, for farmers, for women, for
people running small and micro enterprises, and so on.

Billed
as the last full budget of this second NDA government, Budget
2018 was not expected to surprise. Its primary thrust had
to be a show of concern for the large mass of the deprived
in India, with some focus on the agricultural sector which
by all accounts has been neglected and allowed to languish
over the last four years.

Budget
2018 is expected to be famer-oriented, with persistent agricultural
distress and near-stagnant farmer income contrary to the promises
made by the government. But, even as the election come near,
the scale of increased spending that is required for all of
this is unlikely to be met, given the self-imposed constraints
of “fiscal responsibility”.

Budget
2018-19 will feature a window dressed Revised Estimate to
ensure that the fiscal deficit is on target. The government’s
decision to sell its stake in HPCL to ONGC is only one more
step in that direction.

Contemporary
Fascism around the world is emerging as neo-liberal capitalism’s
“gift” to mankind in the period of its maturity, when it submerges
the world economy in a crisis, and reaches a dead-end from
which there is no obvious escape.

Like
the person on the proverbial tiger, the Indian economy is
currently riding a precarious course. The Government of India’s
Economic Survey for 2017-18 recognizes this frankly, but its
panacea is to keep one’s fingers crossed and hope that the
ride continues.

Changing
the unequal economic tendencies brought out in the World Inequality
Report 2018 requires changing the politics not just making
governments more accountable to the people, but making people
realise that they are being fooled.

Private
banks, especially foreign ones have relied on off-balance
sheet liabilities to earn revenues and profits, courting risk
and leaving the business of banking proper largely to the
public sector banks.

This
Debate contribution describes the promotion of digital rather
than cash payments as a form of the financialization of finance,
in its role as a payments system, with reference to recent
Indian experience. The obsession with digital transactions
as a marker of social and material progress is misplaced;
it may become yet another means by which finance extracts
rentier incomes out of relatively poor populations.

The fourth lecture, titled ‘Karl Marx's Capital & the Present’,
was delivered on 30th September, 2017 at the India Habitat Centre
in New Delhi. In this, the professor talks about contemporary
insights that can be drawn from Das Kapital after 150 years
of its publication.

The
primary reason why loan-waiver is being demanded at present
is not an output fall owing to any natural calamity. It is
the price-fall on account of the bumper harvest that underlies
this demand. It is the breaking down of an appropriate institutional
mechanism that is responsible for the peasants’ distress and
periodic demands for loan-waivers.

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